The Best Good Thing
by northernexposure
Summary: Another version of the 'missing scene from 9.8'.


The Best Good Thing

**A/N: **Predictably, another take on the 'missing scene' from 9.8. Probably quite weak… like me, after that finale. What, no cliffhanger? And I think we Harry and Ruth fans had the best of it last night. Poor Lucas.

xx

The atmosphere on the Grid was subdued when Harry returned. It had taken him hours to get back – sorting out the police, the coroner, fielding calls for information from the Home Secretary. He looked around, but there was no sign of Ruth. He'd wanted to call her, but wasn't sure it would be welcome. He'd almost called her in the car on his way to meet Lucas, but had realised the only things he wanted to tell her were things she didn't want to hear.

"Tariq," he greeted the young tech wearily. The boy had a bruise forming on his cheek, another legacy of Harry's weakness. "How are you?"

"OK," Tariq said, quietly. "I still can't believe he jumped. But I'm glad – I'm glad you're OK, Harry."

Harry patted him on the shoulder. "You should go home, get some rest. It's been a hell of a day or two, yes?"

"I thought you might need me. I'm not sure…"

"There's nothing more you need to do tonight. Go."

Tariq nodded gratefully, and turned away. Harry looked towards Ruth's empty desk. "Where's Ruth?"

"She – she was upset. Said she needed some air, but that she'd be back. That was about an hour ago. Do you want me to find her?"

Harry smiled thinly, rubbing a hand over his eyes. "No. No, thank you."

He went to his office and sat in his chair, feeling life hanging heavy upon his shoulders. He tried to take a breath, to let it go along with everything else, aware that the next hours, days and weeks would probably be a nightmare. But he couldn't relax. He could see Ruth's empty desk through the glass, and realised that all he really wanted was to see her face.

There were two or three places she could be. Harry pulled on his coat and checked the roof, but it was empty. The rough night wind cut into him, reminding Harry of his last, all-too-recent rooftop sojourn.

The sky was dark as he stepped from the main doors of Thames House and headed for Lambeth Bridge. It was cold, an extra bite in the wind signalling the rapid approach of a cold snap. Harry bunched his shoulders against the cold as he turned off the bridge and walked down the steps onto the promenade.

The paving slabs were all but deserted, the benches, too. He carried on walking, convinced she had to be here somewhere. Harry was directly opposite the Houses of Parliament, almost at Westminister bridge, when he saw her. His heart turned over as he realised it was the same bench they'd always used to sit on, years ago, before everything fell apart for them both.

Harry paused, suddenly reluctant to disturb her. Ruth was staring out across the water, gaze fixed on the intricate stonework of the seat of British politics. But after a moment of him standing there, watching her quiet figure, she turned her head to look at him.

He tried to read her face. There was something there that made his heart stutter – relief, perhaps? It existed alongside the grief that was clear in her eyes, a grief Harry held in his own heart. After a moment she moved from her position in the middle of the bench, shifting slightly, leaving him room.

"I wondered if you would look for me," she said, quietly, as he sat down.

"How are you?"

She shook her head. "I should be asking you that." Ruth looked up at him, and he knew her eyes were fixed on the strips holding shut the cut on his forehead.

"I'm fine." And it was true, he was. Or at least, he was on the way to being so. Funny how the sight of her face could so easily calm his heart.

She turned, looking out across the dark Thames, the silence of the water enveloping them both.

"Why didn't you tell me?"

He couldn't move his eyes from her profile, her eyes, so large in the darkness. "Didn't tell you what, Ruth?"

"That what you traded – Albany – was harmless."

"Well, it's not harmless, in security terms, anyway. But it's not deadly, at least."

"You should have told me. In your office, when I-" She shook her head. "Why didn't you?"

"What difference would it have made, if I had?"

"I – I wouldn't have let you go to Lucas alone," she said. "I would have…"

Harry nodded. "Yes, you would have." He didn't think he needed to answer further. Ruth stared out over the water as he watched her face, the winter wind ruffling her hair. "What does it mean? That it wasn't… as monumental a trade as you thought?"

Her eyes flicked to his, full of disbelief. "Harry – I thought you'd given away a weapon of genocide, to save me. How would I have lived with _that_? Instead, it was just…"

"Just what?"

"Just you," she whispered, looking down at her hands. "Your life, your career, your reputation. I thought you'd become someone I didn't know. Like Lucas. But you were being more yourself than I've seen in a long time. Sacrificing yourself, for… for…" She trailed off, swallowing painfully. "And they'll hound you for it."

Harry nodded. "I know they will. I think this is likely to be the end of the line for me."

Ruth blinked. "After everything you've done…"

"Nothing compared to this, I'm afraid. I gave away a state secret. I knew what I was doing. And it's treason, nothing less."

"Don't say that." Harry saw Ruth's hand flex toward him. She stopped herself before she touched his hand. "That it was for me. I'm not worth…"

"Don't tell me your aren't worth it. I don't regret it," he said. "And no matter what happens to me now – I never will."

"I will, Harry. _I_ will."

"You shouldn't. Ruth, I want you to understand something." Harry paused, and then reached out to take her hand. She jumped, slightly, but didn't pull away. "I'm approaching 60, and I have given everything to my country. _Everything_. I've sacrificed friends, my family life – my relationship with my children. My every waking hour, and plenty of my sleeping ones, too. My freedom, in fact. And you… you were the line. Your life was the line in the sand that I was not prepared to cross. I decided that a long time ago, probably before I'd even admitted it to myself. Certainly before any of this started."

"But, Harry – everything you've worked to achieve. All of that, it can't be-"

Harry shook his head. "I've known my limited life without you in it. Knowing the _world _without you in it – I don't need to experience that to know it would be unbearable. If I had let you die…" He stopped, looking down at her slim hand, still curled in his. Harry stroked his thumb over her knuckle. "Fair or not - _Sine qua non_, Ruth."

Ruth made a soft sound in her throat, mid-way between a quiet sob and an intake of breath. "Without this, nothing," she whispered.

"Yes. So. It was as much for me, as for you," he smiled. "And whatever comes next, I will have the knowledge that you… are still in the world. And that's all I need for it to be the best good thing I have done in a long while."

They fell into silence. Ruth didn't look at him, but instead fastened her gaze on where their hands were still joined on her lap. After a moment, Harry felt hers move, and thought she was pulling it away. It took in a second or so for him to realise that she was turning her hand over so as to lace her fingers between his. She still didn't look at him, but she began to speak.

"When Lucas – when he had me… we talked," Ruth began, quietly.

Harry shifted slightly to better see her face. "What about?"

Her mouth twitched, wryly. "About you. I told him you'd never trade Albany for me, and he told me I was underestimating myself."

Harry nodded. It was something he'd been guilty of himself in the past, underestimating her. Never again, he promised himself. _Never again_.

"I told him you'd asked me to marry you, and that I'd said no. And he… he…"

Harry could see the lines creasing her face as she frowned. "He what?"

"He said, 'You love him, don't you?' As if it was all so simple, so obvious. As if the answer to that question is so easy." Ruth broke off, sucking in a harsh breath.

Harry didn't move, didn't say a thing. He didn't push forward, and he didn't pull away. He watched her as she fought to speak, trying to form thoughts around concepts that she had struggled with for so long.

"But it wasn't until I was waiting to hear that you were dead that I realised it was," she whispered, eventually. "It _is_."

He hated to see her looking so lost, so unsure of herself. He reached out, stroking a strand of Ruth's errant hair behind her ear, meaning only to soothe.

"I love you," she said, quietly. "I always have, despite everything."

His hand froze, tangled gently in her hair, fingertips brushing the curve of her earlobe.

"And… and if you were to ask me again, Harry… If you were to ask me again, now… I would say yes."

Harry hadn't realised he'd been holding his breath until he tried to speak, and found himself unable.

"Do you – do you want me to ask?"

"Yes," she said.

Harry felt tears prick at his eyes. "Ruth," he said, hoarsely. "Ruth… I don't know what's coming. I may even end up with a long, _long_ sentence."

She nodded, her fingers squeezing his. "All the more reason not to waste any more time."

He let the silence float between them for another moment, and he was full of indecision. "Ruth…"

"Yes?"

She looked up at him with eyes that were so clear, so full of something he could not believe she was finally allowing to show. And suddenly, there was no choice at all.

He took a breath. "Marry me?"

"Yes."

They stared at each other for another moment as Harry's heart found a new rhythm, full of her. "I've been waiting to kiss you again for five years," he told her.

Ruth smiled, and it was as if the sun had risen in the dead of night. And when their lips touched, Harry could have sworn that five years of his life had melted clean away.

[END]


End file.
